Vocabulary Analysis On Reading - Texts Used By EFL Students

Vocabulary Analysis On Reading

Texts Used By EFL Students

C. Sutarsyah

Universitas Lampung,

Bandar

Lampung

Atrstract: The vocaburary in the texts is the aspect that neecis to identify,.

It is claimed thar rhe condirion of rhe words in a text has

"

g.*,l;fl;;;;.

to readers' comprehension. It is also commonry berievei rtru,

"ornp..-

hension depends on the extent that the words in a text are familiar _{to the} readers. This case study was carried out in the English Education De_

partment of university of Malang. The aim of ttre study is to identify and describe the vocabulary in the text and to seek if the text is usefur for

reading skill development. The reading materiars under investigation were a collection of reading passages based on the syllabus @eJding Com- prehension I) and limited to the passages that rvere used in crasJduring the second semester, 1999. Based onlhe nat're of the investigation,'a descriptive qualitative design was applied to obtain the data.-For this purpose' some avairable computer programs were used. They were used to find the description ofvocabulary in the texts. The vocabulary analy_

ses in the texts revear some constrains. It was found that the texts. con- taining 7,945 words of 20 different _{texrs, are} dominated by low fr.qu"n.y words which account for r6.g7vo of the rvords in Lhe texts. In terms of high frequency words occurring in the texts, function words dominate the iexts. Of the 50 most frequent words, only _two contenf words Qteople and say) were found. _{In the case of word} ievel, it was found that the texts -being

used have very rimited number cf words from GSL (General service List of English Words) flVest, 1953). The proporrion of rhe firsr 1,000 words of GSL only accounrs for 44.6vo.Ttre daia also show that the texts

:?ntln

^{too large} proportion of words which _are not in the three levels (the first _{2,000 and}

uwl).

These words account for 26.44voof the run_

ning words in the texts. Based on the findings, some concrusions were drawn, it is believed that the constraints

*.iu"

to the selection of the texts which _{are made} of a series of short-unrelated texts (20 different topics)' _This kind of text is subject to the accumulation of row fr"qu"n"f

words especially those of content words and limited of words from GSL.

194

Sutarsyah, Vocabulary Analysis on Rea'ding Texts ^Used By EFL Students 195

This vocabulary condition could defeat the development of students' reading skills and vocabulary enrichment'

Key lVords: \'ocabulary, low frequency words, high frequency words' word list, word level.

Readingisapractical,purposefulaccomplishmentthatisvitalto

learning in

ihool

^and all through life. Most information ^passes through the

writter. words, and any one

who finds

^reading

difficult is

seriously handicapped

in

the civilized struggle

for

^{a place}

in

^the

world

^(Rubin,

1982).

ihe

ability ^{to read} English ^texts for ^{students who} want to increase their knowledge ^seems inevitable. This is particularly ^true of E'nglish as so rnuch professional, technical and scientific literature is published in English today (Alderson, ^1984).

English textbooks dominate most literature, they constitute ^about ninety

p"t

""nt of all

required textbooks

in

many colleges ^(Retmono, 1980).

In

many countries, like Indonesia, English is iearned by a large numbers

of

students who

will

never have the opportunity of conversing

with

native speakers,

but

who

will

have ^access

to

^the literature ^and periodicais, or scientific ^and technical journals written in the language they are learning (Rivers, 1981). Thus, reading skill ^is virtualiy ^rnore important in this context than other skills. In fact,

it

is not enough

for

a student to have reading skills in their first language'

on

the other hand, despite this specific ^need for a foreign ^language, very frequently, ^{students reading} in a foreign language seem to read with less understanding ^{than one} might expeci ^them to have (Alderson, 1984)'

It

is observable that many students are still not able to comprehend texts when they enter the tertiary level. Day and Bamford (2000) also claim that in general, students leaming to read English ^{as a} foreign language find

it

a difficult process, and as a result, they do not enjoy

it'

on

the other hand, reading

skill

has become the most impofiant component

of

Engiish teaching

in

Indonesia.

It

has been decided ^that since rhe 1967 Ministerial Decree and

the

1984 syllabus, the ^general objcctive

of

ELT in the secondary school is to develop reading

skill

in English ^(sce Hurla, ^1992). This decision is ^enhanced by the result of the l9tt7-1990 nrrliorr:rl survcy

of

the teaching of English

in

the secondary st.lro()l (llrrrl:r, lr)()o) rvlrit.lr trccorncs thc basis of the elnergence

of

^the

l()()4 lltrlllislt:,1'll;tlrrr', lor (ltt'scctltttlitry sclt<lol Thc ohjcctivcs of

Ill-T

in

196 TEFLIN Journal, Volume XIt Number 2, August Z0ot

the secondary school. in these two syllabi givc

,

^srr.ong emphasis on the development

of

reading,

in

addition to risicning, rp"riti,,g, and writing skills' These documents suggest that reacling

in l:'glish

is an important skill for secondary schoor students to equip thern

in

tcrtiary educati,on and, their future

life

as well.

of

the skills stated, the ability to read today is _{the mosr} realistic in terms

of

ranguage use. Indonesian language

is

used

in

alr schools and colleges. Students are expected

to

be able

to

read academic texts in English and have to master a totar of 4,000 vocabulary items as set by the 1984 curriculum. For some reasons, in the 1994 cuniculum, the number

of

vocabulary items was reduced

to

about 2,500 items

for

social and science Program and 3,000 for Language program (Depdikbud

,

^1993:1).

This vocabulary _size is actuaily sufficient

foia

studeni

in

order to read academic texts. Nevertheress, these objectives are not

well u.H"uJ

^_-'

However, some studies show that the students have low achievement in reading skills and vocaburary gain. It is predicted _{that the} SMU graduates have only mastered about 1,000 words. Resurts of some researches also support the view that reading in a language which is not the learners, first, language is a source of considerable difficulty (Alderson, _19g4).

Many

efforts have been made

to

impiove the learners, reading.

ability. some of them are shown by the existence of books on theories

of

reading

and

some books

on

reading exercises

or

learning

to

read.

However, as srared

by

some experts (Baradja and

Machm;J, i6;;

Sadtono, 1995; Retmono,

l9g0;

Adams, 19g0; Eskey, Iggg),

,n" f^"i-

show.s that many learners

still

encounter problems or difficurties when- trying ro understand an English text.

If we want to identify what makes for success and what causes

failure

in

learning to read, we

will

find a very long list of variables that can be drawn up. However, some experts agree that

tf,"." *" tfrr"

factors which are very dorninant, that is, the learners, the teacher, and the materials- In spite of the interdependency of these three factors, _{each can} Lre considered independently of the others.

Dakin (1973) _{has an} interesting idea about these three variables. _She explains that the materials have their own structure _because they are

written by different people. The materiar writers, again, have their own perception towards the learners. Thus, the materiars have their own pran

of

development, and their

own

weaknesses, which both teacher and learners must overcome.

Surarsyah, Vocabulary Arclysis On Reading Texts llsed By EFL Students 19?

The interdependency can be illustrated

in

Figure 1 as taken from Dakin (1973: fbOi.

ftt"

figure shows that each variable has

its

own identity ^and its own ^rate of development' The two-way alrows show ^that they ^have relationshiP ^and

(Learners)

(Materials)

(Dakin, 1973) factors in learning-teaching (Teacher)

Figure 1 The interdependency of the three

interdependency that are set up in the classroom' The teacher has his orvn method

of

teaching and using the materials and his own ^method

towar,Js the iearners' Th! leu'ners develop their own ^methods of leaming io .".porro to both ^the teacher and to the materials. Finally, the ^materials

arewrittenbyauthorswhohaveaparticularteacherandparticular

learners in mind'

Success or failure in learning to read depends on what islearned' ^not onwhattheteacherandmaterialssetouttoteach.Thejoboftheteacher- andthematerialsiStopromoteinthelearnerssuccessful.techniqueol'

t"u*ing

^(Dakin, 1973). Thus, even though our attention

is

paid to thc factors, rve

still

have too many ^variables to look at' ^Based on Dakin's

ifr-t*"if"t

^{in Figuie 1'1, this research,} therefore' is only ^focused on thc reading materials ^used by EFL ^learners'

According ^to Nuualli1985), ^other common problems which ^{are oftetr}

facedbythestudents*"tuo'iti*izingthefeaturesofatextthatarc

knowntogiverisetodifficultiesforthereaders.Theseincludevocabulary and sentence structure, ^cohesive devices and discourse markers'

Thevocabularyinthetextsistheaspectthatneedstoidentify.Itis

claimed that ^the condition of ^the words in ^a text has a great influcncc ^ttr readers,comprehension.Itisalsocommonlybelievedthatcomprehcnsitllr dependsontheextentthatthewordsinatextarefamiliartothercaclors.

on

rr,"

.thcr

^{hancl, the} familiarity of words implier that thc rcadcrs ltavc alre:atly tttct lltt: wortls lbr many times ^and havc bcctt sttlrcd in tlrcir ^krrtg' t(:tril tilr.rrr(}r1, 'llrc:ic *.,rrls usually bclong to high li't:tltrctrc:y wttltls lttltl

---*

198 TEFLIN Joumal, Volume XII Number 2, August 2001

occur

in

wide ranges

of

texts and most

of

thern belong

to

the most frequent words

of

General Service List

of

English Words (West, 1953).

In contrast, the words that are infrequent are usually considered difficult

for

most readers. Some

of

these words are

of

technical words and are

not

in

the thrce Base Word List

of

Nation's (1997). Thus, an ideal text is the text that has enough high frequency words and not too many low frequency words.

On the other hand, an ideal text or course book has a good density index. Density index

of

a ^passage

or

a lesson

or

a course book

is

^the proportion

of

different words

to

the total number

of

words

or

running words in

it

(Nation, 1990).

If

this proportion is high, reading is relatively easy.

In

other words,

in

order

to

get high-density index, many

of

the different words must be frequently repeated. This also implies that the

text

containing

too

many

low

frequency words

is

relatively difficult.

According to Nation (1990), the density index of an English course book is usually of ^the ratio of l:2.4. This means that, on an average, each word

is

repeated between two

or

three times.

An

efficient course

book

for beginning sfudents should have density index

of

around

l:20

^(Nation,

1990). In later years the density index should be decreased to about l:10

or I:12. A

^course book containing a large number of words that occur less than five or six times can not be efficient. This course book usually has density index

of

^1:2.4

or

l:4.

This case study was carried out in the English Education Department of UIv{. The students are coming from high school at rhe age

of

18. This teacher education program lasts about

four

years.

In this

department, English is used as a medium of instruction for most subjects taught in the department.

It

^prepares English teachers

to

teach English as a foreign language in high schools where reading receives the most emphasis. The main goals

of

English Department are,

first, to

improve the students' command

of

English

for

the purpose

of

teaching the language, and, second, to enhance their knowledge in the field of language teaching. As the latter goal, content courses are offered and make up 40 percent of the

total courses.

Based on the discussion above, the texts being used

for

a reading class at the English Department

of UM

are believed

to

contain some constraint that make them difficult for the students to read. The study is guided by one main research question: to what extent can the texts being used for a reading class support students' reading skills? Specifically, rhc

.5r/rrrtvrt/r' \'rttrtl'rtlttrt' Art'r'lvstr ()n RLultnli lttts Iltt'l lll' l:l'l ^Sturt

study is focused on the research question: to what cxtettt is the ^v<lcabu

iuiu'in

^{th" texts useful for reading skill} development?

'^, ;;1;'*ri,.r:, *no*t"ag", ihere is no rhorough investigatitrrr .tt reading materials "'p""i"ffy Jn vocabulary analysis' Most studies dcirl with the output "f l";i;;-teactring' *u"h u'' reading achievemeut arttl vocabulary guln, teu'ie"l"t"" "oi"t

(Sadtono' 1995; Reunono' l9ti0;

Nurweni, fqqS;

Cftatira'"g*u"'

^1981J Some others deal

with

^tltc

relationship ^between

il;6;tt1va;1uf,s

^{and a dependent variatrlc irr}

reading

compreirenst;;-J;

^{as rhar}

of

Chandrasegaran's (1981)' ^Sorttc concentrate on the

i"p"i ,*tt as syliabus, teaching materials, lcarrtets' behavior and characteristics'

N{ft.l}lOD

The texts being investigated were the ^{ones used} by the studcnts ^ttt the class and the

on"' ""Jfo'' the tests' A computer-based calculation was used by using ""tii^lf" piogtu* in-the

computer' To do this' all thc texts were ^rety'ped

t" i"l""tp-tJr

^{readable data' During} the scnrcstcr' ^?0

textswereusedinboththeclassroomanclthetests.Aliinftlrnrlrli.rrr

indicares the

compleiil-";;

^{rexr and is usecl to judge the} condiliotr

ol

^rr text.Asithasbeendiscussed,thetextconditioncaninfluencesttttlcnts' reaciing

p..fo,mun"'-fn"

investigation

on the

texts was lnatltr ^ott vocabulary con'Jition' This vocabulary examination was dividcd ittlti twtt sections. The first on"^i, ^O.ufing wiitr the examination of high ^:rn<l l,rr' frequency words

""""tltg i-

'fr" '"*o'

^{The second}

one deals wi(lt ^tlrt' classification of ^words in the texts into three levels'

Computer

p'og'Ls

^{called WORD. and} Vocaprolile wcrtr ttsctl ^ltr

analyze words

in

^these

two

investigations' These computcr ptttgrltttts were prepar"O unO-a"tigned

in

Computing Service

(lcnter'

Vieltrr i;r

university or

w"llington]

New Zraland lNation, ^1997). word prol'rrtttt simply uses an inpu?

nt" of

^{reading text} and analyzes

it to l'intl

^tltt'

frequency of o".ut'Jnce

of

^each

*oid' Tt'"

^output

of

this progritttt is ^:r series

of *o.O tistl Lt"g"O

alphabetically

with their

lieqLrcll:I,

::'

occuffences und ,unk order"of

*oid

fr"qu"ncy list with thcir,pr()portr()rr

Fromthisrankorderil,,*"canseethemoitfrequcntwortlsttltlrltlrc

leastfrequentwords.Bothwordlistswereproducediltthclilrrrrtll.rvtltrl

tyPc:s ()r' wortl

{ilrrns

_{i'rlxrl trrrrt}

Mltlty t'xpt'rts ltltvt: clairned that worcl l-lcrltrcllcy ctlttltt ^ts

lirt'ltlt.rtr.v;tltl;tlttrtt:ttttlttll.indtlrcttltlstirtrlltrrllttt(wtrtrlsltllcltttt,

200 TEFUN Joumal, Volume XII Number 2, August 20Ol

because word selection

is

needed since

it

is impossible to learn

ail

the words at once. At this context this investigation _{is usefur to see}

if

^the texts are appropriate to help develop students, reading skills.

other investigation on vocaburary is based on word levers. By using the computer program, Vocaprofile, the words

in

the texts were grouped

into

three levels (three Base Word Lists). The Vocaprofile provides a

series

of

selected three Base

word'Lists that

are used

to run

the program. The program processes _an input file (reading text) and automati- cally classifies words

in

the text into three levels based on these three Base word Lists. The output is a series of word lists ananged alphabeti- cally

with

their frequency

of

occurrences.

The main pu{pose

of

this analysis

is to

see what and how many words in the texts are and are not in the lists. By having this,:we can see

how many words

in

the texts are among

ttr.

ttigi, frelquency words

of

English (Level

I

and

II

or Base word List

I

and

II)

and how many in the

university word List or Level

III

(Xue and Narion,

lgs+).

This i'vesti_

gation is also useful to see to what extent the texts with the vcicaburary they

contai'

can herp the rearners deverop their reading skilr's,

Base word List one and Base word List two consist of thefirst 2,000 most frequent words _taken

from A

Generar service List

-of

_Engtish words (wesr, lg53), called GSL for shorr. According ro

w"rt iigs:,

^uii),

the rvords represent a list of 2,000 Generar service

*oros

6nd.considered suitable as the basis

of

vocabulary

for

learning English ds

a

^second

language' Thus, Base

word List

one consistr

or tn"

first:1;000 _most frequent of GSL and Base wbrd List two consists of the next i',000 most frequent words

of

GSI-. Base word

List

Three consist

of

w6rds not in any

of

these lists, the

first

2.000 most frequent words, but,which are frequent.

in

university texts from wide range of disciplines. These words were originally

from

rhe university

word List

prepared

bf Xue

and Nation (1984).

The seiection of _{words for Base word} List one and two is based on word frequency. words with frequency

of

332 or more occurrences per five million running words in _{the GSL were put} in Base word List one (1't 1,000 most frequent words). words with fiequency of 33L o.

t"r, p..

five million _{running words in the GSL were put in the Base}

word List two, 2"'r 1,000 most frequent words.

It

should be taken into account that the crassification of words in the text is mainly bascd on wrlrd fanrilics.

It

mcans that words with the samc

Sutarsyah,VocabularyAnalysisonReadingTextslJsedByEFl'Students20l\

familyareconsideredonewordfamily'Take'forexample'thercotrelate wittr its derivational words, was divided into several word families ^as follows:

*

_relate

-

^relates

-

^related

-

relatedness

-

^relating

-

^unrelated

x _relation

-

^relations

* relationshiP

*

_relative

*

relatively - relativity

Thus,

if

all these words ^occur in a text, they are considered as 4 word families,relate,relation,relationship'andrelativewhosefrequencyof occulrence is 6, 2,

l,

and 3 respectively' This word famiiy classification is based on derivational affixation of level ^{1 up} to 4 of Bauer and Nation

(1993).Theideaisthatwhenastudentknowsthewordrelate,itis

assumedthatheknowsthewordrelates'related'relatedness'relating' andunrelated.Therefore,thesewordsareconsideredonewordfamily.

it is also assumed that he cannot recognize the words relative and relationshipbasedonthebasewotdrelate.Therefore,theyareconsid_

ered different word families. [n addition, ^the number of running words anil different words or word types in the texts are presented. This data ^clttt be used to find ^the density ^index of the text t'eing ^used

RESULTSANDDISCUSSION

Astheaimofthestudy,theinvestigationonthereadingmaterialsis limited to ^the condition of vocabulary in the texts. This aspect is usually used

as the

basis

to

^judge the acceptability

of a

reading

text'

^'l'lrt:

discussion on vocabulary

is

^divided

into two

subsections, that

is,

thc discussion

on high

und

lo*

^{frequency words}

in the

texts ancl llrt:

classifications of word levels'

High and Low

^{FrequencY Words}

Thisinvestigationidentifiestheproportionofhighandlowli-cclttcttcy words

that

occur

in

the texts. As has been discussed, the colrll)trl(:r programrevealsthatthetextsconsistofT,g45runningwords.Tirblcllists ine alstriuution of word occurrence beginning frorn most frcqucnr

r.

^lcrrsr

frequent.

It

was found that ^{the most} frequent wtlrcl <rccurrcd 515 ^tirrlcs

anithis

accounts for ^6.497o of ^the words in lhe

text''l'ltcrc

is

ottly.ttt'

itern (tlrc) litrrrrrl wilh this frcquency.'l'ho llcxt lllost I'r'ctltrc:rt( wtlttl ^oc'cttls 23ll firut's;rrrrl

il

tovt'ls 3.0 17' ol ^tht: wottls''l'ltc: cttttrtrl:tlivt: pctccrttltgt'

ol'rltis

rvolrl lo1'r'lllt'r rvrllt lltt'l'tt'vttttts ottt' is ()'5(1"/";tlltl _{stt ott'}

,'202 TEFLIN Journal, Volume Xll Number 2, August 2001

Looking

at the low

frequency words, the condition

is

somewhat different.

The

table shows that

the

reast frequent words,

the

words occurring once, dominate the texts. There are r,346 words

or

l6.97vo

of

the words

of

this type found

in

the texts. This means that

in

average

of

ten words about one to two words occur once. Thus, having met these words for'the first time, the reader would not meet again. obviously, no repetition

for

these words

is

found by the reader working through the texts.

Furthermore, the number of words whose frequency is 4 and less is

2,847 _words

or

35.90vo

of

the running words

in

the texts.

while

the occurrences

of

the

four

most frequent words are, 515, _Z3g, ZZ9,

Zll

which accorlnt for 6.49vo, 3.\rvo,Z.ggvo, and z.66vo respectivery. _These, altogether, account for

only

l5.04vo of the words. This indicates that the proportion of low frequency words in the texts is greater than that of the high frequency words.

In the

case

of

vocabulary learning through reading,

too

much proportion of low frequency words is of a little vatue. This-suggests that students working their way through

all

the texts would be continuing meeting words that they would not meet again or rvourd meet onry a few times

in

the texts. Ideally, the texts

do

not consist

of too

many row frequency words but they have more high frequency words, especia'y

Table 1: The distribution of high and low frequency words in the texts No Freq uency/range Number of ^words percentage ^Cumulative(9o) Percentage of

words (7o) I

2 J 4 5 6

8 9 10

ll

t2 IJ

l4 l5 l6

515 238 229

21t

201 187 117 102 66-87 46-65 4A-45 28-39 25-27

t9-2t

l7-18

I I I I

I I I I 4 7 5 8 6 6 7 9

6.49 9.50 t2.38 l 5.04 17.58 19.94 2t.41 22.7 0

26.39 3t -29 34.02 37.38 39.36

4t.lI

42.8,9 44.85

6.49 3.0 i

2.88 2.66

?.54 2.36 t.47 1.29 3.69 4.90

2.7 3

3.36 r.98 t.7 5 1.78 L()6

Sutarsyah, Vocabulary Analysis On Reading Texts ^Lised By EFL Students 203

same topic might be more vaiuable than a series of unrelated texts. This kind of text can provide a lot of repetiticn that is important for optimal Iearning to occur. Whilst, a ^series

of

unrelaied texts must use a bigger proportion

of

low frequency words.

Furthermore, it was aiso found that most of the high frequency words in ^the texts consist of function words. Of ^the first 50 most frequent words, there are only two content words, i.e., people and said ; the rest ^are, of

course, function words. Whilst, in a study done by Sutarsyah et al. ^(1994), there are 18 content words in the 50 most frequent words from economic corpus.

From the list, we ^{can also} identify some function words from ^thesc first 50 most frequent words successively, i.e-, the, to, of, a, and, in, ^he, was,

it,

^and had.

In

the second 50 most frequent words, more ^conl.ent rvords are found, such as read, book,

like,

now, come, long, makt' eyes, look, money, manager, see,

top,

^etc.

This

indicates

that

many function words dominate high frequency words

in

the texts. The ^texts being used are not rich enough as

to

develop students reading skills because too many function words and limited content words occur in thc texrs. Many content words ^are of low frequency in the texts. This nrcatts

that

the

students have

a little

opportunity

to

learn and enrich thcir vocabulary as

to

^iltcrease

their

^reading

skills

^because

they itro

^I)ot

plovidccl by cnrluglt rcpclitions of these words. This text condition is ^ol' rr

littlc

v:tltrc

lirr

tltt' sltrrlcltls wlto learn to rcad-

'lit

t:6ttt'ltrtl(',

w(' ('ittt

lutvt' stltl)c p<lints

tltitt

cittr

bc lltkctt

ittto :rr.('6rrrrl 'l'ltt. ptopotltrttt

ttl

lon, llt't;trt:ttt:y wortls lirtrrrrl

itt

^(lter lcxts is

No Frequency/range Numtrer of ^words percentage ^{Cumulative(7o)}

Percentage of words ^(7o)

t'I l8 t9 20

2l

22 23 24 25 26 2'1 29

14- 15

t2- r3

l0-l ¹

9 8

'7

5 5 4 3 2

I

13

l3

21 9 11 26 56 93 153 335 t 346

47.24 49.27 52.86 53.88

5 5.09

57.39 60.57 64.r0 68.'79

7 4.58

8 3.03

100.00

2.39 2.O3 3.5 9

r.o2

t.2l

2.30 3.18 3.5 3

4.69 5.79 8.45 t6.97

those

of

content words.

At

this point, long continued texts

of

^the

204 TEFLIN Joumal, Volume XII ^Number 2, August 2001

much greater than that

of

the high frequency words. Thus there

is

a

tendency

for

a reader to forget the low

fr"qu"n"y

words when meeting

for

the

first

time

in

the series

of

unrelated texts.

The function words dominate the texts with considerabry high fre- quency.

It

is true that function words _{are used} more frequentlyin _{any text} and they are relatively fewer than content words (Bolinger, igls).These words belong to classes that are relatively closed.

whil;,

content words, which are

of

a great value for reading rearners, are very limited

in

the texts, and yet their occunences are ccnsidered low. This implies that learning content rvords are more important than function words because function words do not deverop. Learning function words does not give much contribution to increase students' ieading performance.

Word

Levels

As has been mentioned, this study also classifies words in the texts

into

three levels based

on

the three base word lists provided

in

^the

computer program. Table

z

shows that most words bel,ong

to

the first level' There are 65t-5 tokens or running words (g2vo) which account fbr 1147 word types

or

54vo. This mates up 706 word _families wirh rhe coverage of 44.65vo.In other words, less than a half of the word families

in

the texts are included

in

the most frequent 1,000 words

of

GsL.

At

level two, the numbers of word families is almost a harf as many as the number of word families at level one (the

first

1,000 words), that is, 335 word farnilies or zl.r9vo. These two groups

of

words berong to the first 2.000 words GSL,

Thbre 2 The number of words and percentage of coverage in the texts

Surars.vah, Vocabulary Analysis On Reading Texts Used By EFL Students 205

expectedtoknowg}Vocoverageofwordsinthetexts.Thesewordsare mostty available in the

first

^{1,000 words and some}

in

the second ^1,000

*ords.Inotherwords,thefirst2,000-wordlevelisthebasicvocabulary

needed ior every ^learner of English as a second language to read English

textandtohaveotherskillsaswell.Numerousstudies,forexample,

Hwang, 1989; Hwang and Nation, 1995; Sutarsyah et

al''

^{1994' have}

confiriied that this high ^frequency vocabulary ^accounts for around ^807o

of

the total running words (tokens)

of

the ^texts

Furthermore,thenumberofthewordsatlevelthreeorUniversity

word List in ^{the texts} is very limited.

It

consists

of

¹²² word families or 7.72Vo of word families.

ln

fact this group of words is important for the learners to develop their reading skills in academic study'

Studiesonwordanalysiswithtwocor?ora'economicsandacademic

textsbySutarsyahetal.(|994)andSutarsyah(1993)showadifferent

result from the ^present study ^(see Table

3)'

The table shows that the

proportionofwordfamiliesatleveloneinbothcorporaT'7j27;and

iq.ig,

^{and at} level two. ^{4.78Vo and 4.32Vo.} Thus, the texts in the present study are dominated by words from the second ^1,000 words level. In fact' the iexts need more words from the

first

1,000-word level so that ^they canreadoptimally.Thetablealsoshowsthattheothertwowordanalyses ur"

.o*p*uble

in that they ^have almost the ^same proportion' However' the proportions

of

words

in

the texts

in

the preselrt study are ^quite different frorn the other ^two.

Table3Thecomparisonofwordcoverageofthepresentstudyandthestudyof

SutarsYah et al. ^(1994j

Word Level Present ^studY

Sutarsyah et aI ^{(1994) and Sutarsyah (1993)}

Economic ^corPus Academic ^corPus The first ^1,000

The second ^1,000 UWI-

Others

44.65%

2r.t9%

7.72%

26.44%

77.72Vo 4.7\Vo 8.7 4Vo 8.77 Vo

7 4.llla

4.32%

8.40%

t3.r6vo

that

is

65.84vo

of

the word families

in

the texts.

In

fact,

with

this proportion of _high frequency words in the texts,

it

seems rather cliflicrrlr

for

the students to read the texts. Ideaily, to rcad optirnaily, ir rt.:rtrr.r ir.

Anothcr constraint is that a group

of

words not

in

any

of

^these

lcvcls is ^toO lurgc, rhal is, Z(t.MVo of the total word families in the texts' Mrtst

ol

llrt.worrls ^lrr tlris AI()tlp ure not very ^{USeful fOr Student'S reading} rlt.vcloprrtcttl llrt'r,r' rvoltls ^:t11' tlll()()llllll()ll itt Itttlst tCXIS' 'SOlne tlf thCm The firsr 1,000

The second 1,000 UWL

Others Total

6515 / 82.0qo

608 /7.7Ea 185 / ^2.390

637 / ^8.0Ec

7945t 100.00%

n47

I54.40% |

loot44.65vo 402

/ tg.tEa j ::s /

zt.jgqa

140/6.6Eo | ^122/7.t2Vo

418

t t9.8ca |

^+rc

/

^{26.44 vo}

2107

/to}.\OEo I

^tsal

r

^tO0.00Vo

2!6 fepUN Journal, Volume XII Number 2, Augu.st 2U)l

are the name

of

people, places

or

countries such as Africa, America, British, Burmdt, China, etc. The words on the nanrc of people were even

found to

have

high

frequency

of

occurrence such

as Delta

(7), Cheseborouqh

(lI),

Henry

(I5), Jim

^(14), etc. More over,

it

was also found that a number of words belong to technical or subtechnical words which are usually

difficult for

learners. Take,

for

example the words apothecaries, audtble, catastrophes, cesmo, damning, drought, em- bankments, extinguish, etc. This seems to be particular to and useful for

a specific area of knowledge. On the other hand, in this group we can find many complicated words such as apologetically, drifting, complacency, disastrous, engenders,

etc.

Therefore, readers whose experience is limited

in

such specific area

will

find the texts difficult.

In terms of density index, the text or the course book being used is considered rather difficult for students.

It

is found that, based on the data

in

Table 2, the density index

of

the rext

is l: 3.77 (2107:7945), which means that on an average each word is repeated between three to four times. This density index is still considered low. In terms of vocabulary learning and reading development for the first year students the text with this index is inefficient. As has been mentioned, an efficient textbook for this group of students has density index of about 1:20 with a low number

of

"one timers".

In

fact, most modern English textbooks have density index

of l: 2.4 containing 40vo of words of one occurrence (Nation, 1990).

It

seems that the unfavorable aspect of the texts is mainly cJue to the choice

of

texts which are made of a series

of

unrelated texts. This kind of texts can increase a vocabulary load of the course enormously because

the texts consist

of

many

low

frequency content words and technicai u'ords. Thus,

it

seems that the texts cannot provide enough repetition for content words which are valuable for skill development.

This finding is in line with the study done by Sutarsyah et al. (1994) which compared one coherence, continuous text

by

one writer on one

topic and a series

of

unrelated texts made up

of

a variety

of

academic texts by many writers. The study reveals that a coherence text by a single writer on a single broad topic uses a very much smaller vocabulary than

a

series

of

unrelated texts. This means that vocabulary load increases

when learners are provided

with

reading materials containing many different texts

of

unrelated topics.

Sutarsyah,VocabularyAnalysisonReadingTextsUsedByEFLStudents20T

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

The investigation on vocabulary yields ^some points. This part has

examined the vocabulary used

in

the texts

in

terms

of

frequency

of

occurrences and word leveis. It reveals that function words ^dominate high frequency words

in

the texts. The texts are also dominated

by

low frequency content words. This condition is not favorable for skill devel- '

opment because the students have

a little

opportunity

to

leam these important words.

In

other words,

the

texts cannot provide enough repetition

of

content words

for

students

to

learn and thus, the text is

difficult to read.

In terms of word levels, the texts consist of too many words ^outside the three levels. This implies that the ^{students face}

with

vocabulary leaming load because the texts contain large number of vocabulary of this type.

In

addition, the texts provide limited words from the

first

^1.000

words

of

GSL so that the ^students have difficulty to read them.

At

the same time, ^the proportion of ^{the words} in the first 2,000-word level is also not enough to provide the students to read optimally.

One reason for this constraint is that the texts were made of a series

of

unrelated texts with different topics or themes. ^Because of different topics, the texts or the course book tend to have many different words and they are usually

of

low frequency

of

occurrences.

Thus, the teachers and course designers are suggested to avoid ^the use

of

reading materials consisting

of

a series

of

unrelated texts, ^even though it is quite impossible to have the whole reading materials ^made

of

related texts for one semester.

It

is worth considering making the course consist

of a few

themes so that the texts

within a

theme bear more relationship to each other and thus make use

of

smaller vocabulary.

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